


Two Dirty Large, One Angry Small

by neuroglam



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: A dash of cucking and NTR in Ch. 10, BlueLycraTights!Otabek, Constipated macho idiots who have the hots for each other, Infidelity (JJ), It's been four years since the show ended and he still hasn't gotten a haircut, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Otabek POV, Otabek and Yuri are... something long distance, Past JJ/Isabella, Skype Sex, Yuri P stretches like a diva, but it all turns out Okay in the end, now if everyone would just listen to JJ, well--mostly, who angsts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-07 05:24:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuroglam/pseuds/neuroglam
Summary: Yuri P has a crush, Otabek has a bigger one, and JJ has A Plan. Now, if these two idiots can just get over themselves and get with the program, life would be great.Beware--there's mistakes in the writing, but I'm calling this done. Enjoy~





	1. Chapter 1

"Dude. I need a place to stay."

"Dude," Otabek says affectedly into his phone. "It's eleven forty-three. PM. Hello to you, too."

"Yeah, sorry, hi- can you give me your address?"

 _What the fuck?_ Otabek rubs the sleepiness from his eyes and frowns. "Look, JJ, I don't know what this has to do with me, and it's late. I need to go."

"Wait, Otabek, fuck-" Otabek's phone is already away from his ear. He sincerely intends to hang up, when- "She found out, alright?"

Otabek sighs—long and drawn out. He brings the phone back up to his ear.

"And apparently it's not a problem because it was “just men,” whatever _that_ means,” JJ says, “But it  _is_  a problem that I was going to marry her without telling her about it."

Otabek exhales. How do shared hand jobs in random hotel bathrooms mean he's the right person for this?

"C’mon, man," JJ continues. "You're still in NYC, right? Your number's got a New York area code. I'm in a cab heading downtown from Newark..."

"Dude." Otabek says, and how JJ doesn't pick up the sarcasm, he doesn't know. "Why me?"

JJ's bravado cracks a little. "I couldn't think of anyone else to call. Look—what should I tell the driver?"

 _To drive you to a Holiday Inn_ , Otabek wants to say, but doesn't. 

"Please, dude?" JJ says. "I can't be in Toronto right now… and we're friends, right? Um. At least I thought we were friends."

There's something in JJ's tone, and it makes Otabek remember the first time he got followed into the bathroom in the middle of a banquet dinner.

_________________________

JJ leans on the wall next to the urinal and shamelessly looks at him hold it and piss. "You were checking me out. At the table," he says with a raised eyebrow.

"So were you," Otabek deadpans and keeps pissing. JJ may be taller and could probably take him in a fight, but Otabek’s fucked if he’ll let it get to him.

JJ studies him for a moment. “Hmm,” he says, apparently satisfied with whatever he sees, and reaches for his belt-buckle.

Otabek stares as JJ's hands dig into his boxers. A distant part of his mind supplies that he's finished pissing so he should probably shake it out.

"C'mon, let me see you," JJ says, pointing at Otabek's dick with a jerk of his chin. JJ's dick is out now and JJ is rubbing it slowly, eyes shifting from Otabek's face to his dick and back. And Okay, yeah, this is hot—Otabek can get behind this. Looks like his dick can get behind it, too.

They jerk each other off side by side, in a hurry. Someone can walk right in, and there's zero ambiguity to what's happening here—not with the grunts and the slap of hands on skin and their heavy breathing resonating in the room. Otabek can't stop looking at JJ's fat, veiny cock, dark and flushed and so, so hard.

JJ stops and raises up his hand to Otabek's face. It smells like dick. Otabek groans.

"Spit," JJ says. "Spit a lot."

Otabek spits, then spits again. JJ brings it down and slathers it all over his dick. The dull grey-pink of his cockhead glistens now, and JJ moans, hand speeding up—so Otabek speeds up, too, biting on his lip and trying to keep quiet.

"Fuck, I'm close," JJ says. "You're close too, yeah?"

Otabek nods and splatters the urinal with long white streaks of come, watching as JJ leans on him and aims, layering his own shot over. 

For a while, Otabek can only hear his own heart over the sound of their panting breaths. 

"That was hot," JJ says and buckles up. Otabek watches him walk over to the sink and wash his hands like it's the most natural thing on earth. 

Otabek thinks he should probably pull up his pants, too, but for some reason all he can do is stare, his soft dick hanging out.

"Nice haircut," JJ says with a wink as he walks out, leaving Otabek to figure out what the fuck just happened. 

_________________________

Otabek gets followed to the bathrooms again the very next day, over lunch. As the door falls closed, JJ’s nods in the direction of a stall. "I do you, you do me this time, yeah?" A packet of lube, warm from being in JJ's pocket, gets tossed in Otabek's direction—and that, as they say, is that.

The time after that, it’s Otabek following JJ. The time after _that_ , they even make it to an actual room. In between times, Otabek does his thing.

JJ, presumably, does Isabella.

_________________________

In his small studio in Brooklyn, Otabek closes his eyes and sighs deeply into his phone. Friends. Otabek supposes they were friends—kind of. Maybe. For whatever definition of friends included shared looks over banquet tables and a tacit understanding that they'll be sucking each other off that night.

"Right, yeah, Okay," Otabek says and runs a head through his hair. "I'll text you the address."  

He cuts off the call and toes on his shoes, heading out the front door, nose down in his phone as he absently types out directions. He's headed to the corner store—his sixth sense is telling him that tonight will call for vodka, and Otabek is almost out.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Otabek gets the vodka fifteen minutes before the corner store closes at midnight. Honestly, he's relieved. He doesn't want to do tonight sober.

"Apt. 4a," he texts one-handed. "Ring, I'll buzz you in."

He grips the paper-bagged Vodka with the other. Then, just because he's feeling mean: "Hope you didn't bring a lot of luggage. It's a walk-up."

"Bitch." JJ texts back.

Then, after a minute: "You're helping. I don't have much clothes but I've got my skating gear."

So Otabek made a good call on the vodka. _I've got my skating gear_ is serious; it's not just, _I'll be away for the weekend then we can talk_.

Back home, Otabek sticks the vodka in the freezer and pokes around on his phone for a pizza joint that still delivers. He orders a large Meat Lovers,' then thinks for a second and adds cheese sticks, onion rings, and a large bottle of coke.

Next he clears space in the corner for JJ's suitcase.

_______________________

  
The pizza arrives a only a short while before JJ does. He's got two suitcases, black and nondescript. They're not too heavy, but they're bulky, so Otabek helps with one.

"Sit." He indicates the couch with his chin once the front door of the studio closes behind them. "Take off your shoes, Jesus."

"Oh, sorry." JJ does, contrite—and leaves them right where they are, in the middle of the room.

"Bring them over here, you moron."

"Right," JJ says and runs a hand through his hair.

"There's vodka. And pizza." 

JJ plops himself down, white-socked feet on the floor, knees spread out, and wrinkles his nose. "I don't eat that kind of crap."

"Tonight, you do. It's comfort food for a reason."

Otabek goes for glasses, the vodka, and the coke that currently crowd the tiny kitchen counter in the tiny kitchen nook in his tiny but expensive studio. When he comes back to the living room, JJ is still sitting sprawled on the couch, waiting to be served. 

"Bring the food over," Otabek says and nods towards the kitchen corner.

"Right." JJ gets up and comes back with the bags and the pizza box. He's exercised initiative; he's brought Otabek's roll of paper towels, too. 

Otabek studies JJ as he takes the food out and arranges it on the small coffee table. Just clueless, then—but his heart's in the right place. Cool. Otabek can work with that. 

He pours a generous amount of vodka in one glass, a little-less-than-generous amount in the other, and tops both up with coke. "Here," he says and gives the stronger mix to JJ. 

JJ takes it and drinks, making an uncertain face. 

"No complaints," Otabek says preemptively. "Only the corner store is open this late, and that's what they have."

"Right, yeah, sorry," JJ says and gulps down half the glass, then sighs and collapses back on the couch. "Thank you, man. This... I really appreciate it." He chugs down the rest of the glass. 

Otabek refills it. 

"Okay, talk. What happened?"

JJ shifts on the couch and sits with his elbows on his knees. He rubs his face with his hands. 

"So, um. Apparently, she heard rumors about what I got up to on my me-time nights. So she hired a PA to follow me when I went out. There's pictures and shit."

"Went out where?"

JJ rolls his eyes. "Where do you think."

Okay, so JJ is an idiot. "How did you not notice some dude taking pics of you in a gay bar restroom?" 

"Um. I may have— made out. Outside." JJ's hands are back over his face. "In an alley, like." 

Otabek gives him time to continue, but he doesn't—he just sits there.

"Drink and eat your pizza" Otabek says.

"Yeah, Okay."

Otabek watches as JJ makes his methodical way through a slice, chewing on automatic and barely registering what he's tasting. He chases it with more vodka-coke.

"You're an idiot," Otabek says, and means, "What the fuck dude, you're not just some rando, you've got a public profile to maintain—and yeah, Okay, you've got a thing for public places where you might get caught, but seriously? You don't just hook up with people wherever."

"Yeah," JJ says.

Otabek wishes he could record this moment for posterity—JJ admitting to being a moron. "You should have been more careful."

JJ shrugs one shoulder, gulps down some coke. "I was, at first." He gulps some more. "But then... screw being careful," JJ says and finishes his second glass. This time, he refills it himself.

Otabek can't say he can't relate. He doesn't know exactly what JJ's deal is, but he knows what it's like, having to keep up appearances. JJ was Otabek's "screw being careful," too.

"Why didn't you tell her?" he says in the end. "If she's cool with it being guys." Surely he'd know such a thing about his fiancé—that she thinks the things guys get up to with guys that she doesn't  _quite_ mind. (Because they don't quite count, apparently, a bitter part of him adds.) 

JJ sighs. "Well. She would have said no and made me promise to stop—or she would have said yes and... fuck this shit. I'm sick of fucking needing  _permission_."

Otabek tilts his head to the side. His own family is in Almaty, and he's used to having Responsibilities: calling grandma once a week, Skyping mom and dad and saying hi to his younger sisters. But, apart from that, he's been on his own—traveling for training camps or training abroad. He doesn't know how he would have felt if his mom and dad _were_ his coaches and he was about to get married to the president of his fan club.

If everyone was in his business, all the fucking time. 

Otabek drinks, too, and bites into a piece of pizza. He doesn't eat "this kind of crap" either, but tonight is a special occasion.

JJ fills up his fourth glass, light on the coke. 

Otabek gets the vodka from him and tops up his own drink. Neither of them is saying anything now, but they don't have to—they're good at sharing looks across tables. JJ doesn't need to say that he wants to get good and drunk and then he wants to hook up.

Otabek thinks of JJ below him, fingers digging grooves into his butt-cheeks as their cocks grind, and drinks down. 


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Otabek has to head out for practice before JJ can even think of moving his hungover ass. Otabek wonders if he should wake him up regardless—stands next to the bed with a cup of black coffee in hand and looks down on the dark head of hair on his pillow. It's weird. They haven't ever woken up in the same bed before. 

Otabek stares some more—cheekbones, lashes—and concludes that it's not so bad. JJ doesn't kick or hog the blankets, and tends to stop snoring when elbowed. Good, that: no one needs to move to the couch. 

He pads to the sink and drops his mug in, thinking. In the end, he settles on writing a note:

_I'm off to the rink._

_1\. Keep your shit to your corner._

_2\. You can use my shampoo today, but buy your own._

_3\. If you want to get back on your training meal plan, there's a grocery store two blocks right, three blocks left when you walk out the front door. You can use whatever pots and condiments you find in the cupboards, but stay away from the stuff in the fridge—that's for my meals until the end of the week._

_4\. Wear whatever shit of mine you need to; we'll sort out laundry later._

_5\. I'll be back around 6 PM. If there's something, text me._

__________________________

Otabek doesn't get a text, which makes him conclude that JJ is probably alive and kicking. This proves correct: Otabek finds him sprawled on the couch, doing something on a MacBook.

"How's your head?" he asks. 

"Hurts like fuck." JJ says without looking up. "I poured the rest of the vodka down the drain. I hope you don't mind."

Otabek doesn't mind. If JJ thinks he shouldn't be around booze right now, cool. There's always more vodka at the store. 

Otabek takes his shoes off and walks to the fridge. All his food is accounted for—good—and it looks like JJ's gone shopping, but he hasn't cooked.

Otabek takes out a container to reheat for dinner. "Do you want me to heat one up for you, too?" he says while the microwave whirs. 

"Aren't your containers under count?"

"You can make dinner for both of us tomorrow. More efficient."

JJ grunts from the couch. Otabek can't tell if it's a yes grunt or a no grunt, so he sits on the floor next to the coffee table and eats. JJ is a big boy, he can go to the fridge and microwave a dinner if he wants to. 

________________________

They spend the night in silence, each of them poking around his own laptop. At one point, JJ goes to eat. When he's done, he washes his Tupperware container--and Otabek's, too. "Tomorrow when I cook, you do the washing up," he says as he plops back on the couch. 

Otabek nods and grunts. Fair's fair.

At around eleven at night, Otabek's laptop rings with a Skype call. Otabek pins JJ with the most serious look he's capable of. "Leroy."

JJ looks up.

"Don't make a sound and stay out of the frame. If you ruin this for me, you'll be fishing your skates out of the Gowanus Canal."

JJ nods. 

Otabek presses "Answer."

A grouchy tirade, in Russian, spills through the speakers. 

Otabek's voice drops in his throat, low and rumbly as he "hn"s and "aa"s with a small smile on his face and little crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

JJ looks at Otabek, one amused eyebrow as high up as it'll go--he knows that voice alright. When directed at JJ, it's usually stringing impressive lines of cusses in heavily accented English, but there's no mistaking it: Yuri Plisetsky. Who currently putters around his room, the volume of his grouching rising and falling with his distance to the laptop. 

JJ surreptitiously Googles the time difference to St. Petersburg. It's six in the morning, there. 

Otabek asks Yuri something which provokes another tirade and a yawn, and goes for his Yoga mat as Yuri answers. 

JJ grins. These two giant dorks do their stretches together. 

Otabek sets up on the floor, laptop in front of his mat, and begins his routine. From the intonation, JJ can tell that Yuri occasionally interrupts his complaining to give directions--and the occasional correction. Excellent.

Trying to be as quiet as possible, JJ rolls out his own mat behind the laptop screen and tries to follow along with Otabek.

The entire session lasts around thirty-five minutes, and by the end of it, JJ is lying on his back, panting. "Fuck, that was brutal," he tells Otabek once he ends the call. 

"Hnn."

"Fucking Russians."

"That's the dumbed-down version: for right out of bed. And, obviously, to challenge me," Otabek says.

"Fucking hell."

"Hnn. You should see what he can do when he really gets going."

"Oooh," JJ wiggles his eyebrows. "Should I now? Please do tell me about Plisetsky stretching. How well can he spread his legs?'

"Shut up, asshole. Be respectful. And he _can_ stretch his legs. Really, really well." 

"I knoooow," JJ says. "There was this one time, he was glaring at me with one leg up on the wall over his head, all casual-like. It was awesome."

"Hnn."

"Soo," JJ keeps teasing. "Any particular reason why you stretch out in these baggy sweatpants?"

"Fuck you."

"Do you usually take a shower, after stretching?"

Otabek glares. 

"'Cause I need a shower, too, now—so I just might join you. And _help out_ ," JJ says, mock-earnest. "With, you know, being an attentive audience while you keep talking about how  _Yura_ bends his body." He wiggles his eyebrows. "And with that semi you're sporting."

Otabek groans, annoyed, as he drops his sweats and heads for the shower. JJ trails after him, grinning.

_________________________ 

It turns out that Yuri and Otabek are on Skype every night at eleven, like clockwork.

Every night, JJ stretches with them on the other side of the laptop screen, watching Otabek watch his fairy princess, and letting the Russian wash over him. Three days into it, JJ doesn't even need to tease—as soon as the conversation's over, Otabek is on him, groaning and grinding into JJ until they're both hard, pulling on each other's clothes and biting on the sweaty muscle they can reach. Otabek— _Beks_ , as  _Yura_ calls him—seems to love it when JJ flexes his pecs. 

It's fucking glorious. 

"You should make a move on him," says JJ one night on the yoga mat as Otabek's load leaks out of his ass.

Otabek, who's been worked up to said load partially by  _Yura_ 's bossy whining and stretches, whines in protest himself.

"Dude, Plisetsky likes you. You know he does. How many people does he talk to first thing each morning? Who else does he vent to about anything and everything under the sun. Who else gets Snapchats of his cat? C'mon man. Nut up."

Otabek grunts and walks off to shower.

"What's it to you?" he says once JJ's in the bathroom with him, soaping up his hands real well and preparing for round two.

"What's it to _me_?" JJ asks, incredulous. "I'll be on the other side on the laptop screen watching, bud. Being really, really quiet, like."

Otabek groans and moves one of JJ's hands to his dick. 

_________________________ 

It's two nights later--day six of JJ staying at his place.

They're back from Otabek's rink, where JJ's taken to joining him while he sorts out if he wants to fly his own coach over for a couple of days or if he wants to keep working with Otabek's part-time.

JJ is on the couch with his phone. Otabek's making stir-fry. 

JJ shuts off his phone and tosses it to the side, and looks at the wall flatly.

Otabek raises an eyebrow at him as he walks to the coffee table with their dinner.

JJ sighs and nods to his phone. "My mom texted," he starts slowly and rearranges himself in troubled-JJ pose. That's what Otabek calls it, at least: legs spread, elbows on knees, head in hands. "Isabella, she... she mailed all of my things to my parents'." Jj says and rubs his face. "There was a note, too. Something about how she won't marry a guy who'd rather avoid his problems than try to solve them."

Otabek chews on his broccoli and listens.

"It's not _fair_ , fuck," JJ puts his hands in his hair. " _She_ 's the one who said we should take a break; how the fuck was I supposed to know she wanted me to chase her... fuck." He swallows and squeezes his eyes. "I fucking miss her," he says quietly into his palms.

"D'you want beer?" Otabek says.

"Nah. Just-"

Otabek plops in another piece of broccoli.

JJ breathes in. Out. Wipes at his face. "Just, will you fuck me tonight? I know we're at the rink tomorrow but, fuck—I just need not to think."

Otabek chews on some chicken. "Yeah, fine. I can do that."

They eat in silence, and that's Okay. Otabek is not the type to talk just to talk, JJ is the type who would say whatever it is he wants to say. So between the two of them, they're fine. 

"Dishes?" Otabek says once they're both done.

"Yeah, of course." JJ nods and heads to the sink to do the washing up.

_________________________

 


	4. Chapter 4

“Here.” Otabek hands JJ an open bottle of Sam Adams.

JJ takes it and holds it between his open knees, gazing at the carpet. “I don’t want to drink."

“Too bad,” Otabek says and plops himself next to JJ on the couch, taking a swig from his own.

“I don’t even like Sam Adams,” JJ says.

“Too bad. Drink.”

JJ does that thing where you try to smile but you can’t muster the energy, so your face kind of tries to move but you don’t end up fooling anyone. “Is this an intervention?”

“Yes.”

JJ chuckles and shifts out of his Moping Pose, turning towards Otabek. Much better.

“Cheers,” Otabek says.

JJ clings their bottles together, and they drink.

And sit, staring at each other.

JJ says nothing. It would have worked on someone else—but Otabek’s the kind of dude who doesn’t mind silence. So he lets it stretch.

“Well?” JJ says in the end.

Otabek raises his eyebrows.

“You said it’s an intervention.” JJ says, light-hearted. “So I’m sitting quietly and waiting for the part where you tell me how worried you are and how I should change my self-destructive ways.”

“I’m not worried. You’ll be fine." Otabek says. "I just figured that you’ve been moping for a week and nothing’s changed, so you might want to talk about her.” No need to specify who “she” is.

“Talk?”

Otabek shrugs a shoulder. “You like talking.”

“Dude, there’s statues that like talking, compared to you.”

Otabek takes a swing from his beer. “So. Tell me about Isabella.”

JJ drinks, too. “What do you want to know?”

"Whatever," Otabek shrugs.

JJ sighs and leans back. “I don’t think I’m gonna be over it so easily, dude," he says, staring at the ceiling. "Like, until a week ago, I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her. We had plans—that we’d have kids. That I’d be a stay-at-home dad while she finishes her MBA...”

Otabek scrunches his eyebrows and thinks. “If you really want that, you should go chase her. Even if she says she won’t marry you right now.”

“Yeah. Mom said so, too.”

“So. _Do_ you want to chase her.” Otabek says flatly.

“I...” JJ drinks. “Fuck, I don’t know, man. More like, I always thought that’s just… what was gonna happen. Like, my parents skated together, then they married and retired and had me and Mikaela. So, it’s kind of what I did. Skated, found a nice girl. Proposed to her. Was gonna marry her and retire, and have kids… you know?”

Otabek knows. His grandma asks him whether he’s met a nice girl yet every time he calls. Sometimes, he gets extended lectures: that it doesn’t matter if she’s foreign, but it would be better if she’s Muslim. "There’s less conflicts in a marriage if the two of you have common values. The Ibdrayev’s have a very nice girl, she’s a junior in college, in California; you’d understand each other, you’ve both lived abroad…"

He also knows he could do it. If he had to, he could marry a girl and get along with her and devote himself to raising kids. He also knows he’d need to give up a part of himself to do it. The part that likes clubbing and motorbikes and fancies himself a DJ—but also, the part of him who checks out guys like JJ across banquet tables and ends up hooking up with them in the bathroom.

The part of him that looks at Yura and gets hard—but also, wants to kiss him and protect him and listen to him grouch about nothing in particular. The part of him that wants Yura for himself.

And there will be no time for Yura if he’s picking baby names and pushing strollers.

So, yeah, he knows. He can also picture how easy it would have been to just go with it, if he liked girls just that little bit more. He owes his family—for taking care of him, for paying his coaching fees, for letting him pick up and move abroad to train when he’d shown actual potential. He would have talked himself into it so fast.

He knows, but he also doesn’t. Because they’re different, him and JJ. For Otabek, it would have been about duty—and he doesn’t think that’s it, for JJ.

“So like,” he asks with a strained furrow in his forehead. “Do you think it’s Isabella, or that you wouldn’t get to be married and have kids.”

“Huh?” JJ blinks himself out of whatever daze of his own he’d fallen into. “Um.” He blinks again, then shakes up his bottle. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

Otabek watches him go to the kitchenette and come back with two more bottles of Sam Adams. He checks his own drink: he’s only got a lukewarm inch left, so he gulps it down all at once before reaching his second beer.

JJ sits back down and looks at him, waiting for him to continue.

Otabek tries again. “Like… would you still want to be with her just to be with her. If you guys weren’t getting married.”

“Yeah, of course,” JJ says. “I mean, that’s why I proposed to her. She’s smart, and she’s ambitious, and she loves me. And she’s really good when I’m having a tough time.”

Otabek remembers—she’d stood right by him when he’d made a giant fool of himself back in Barcelona.

“And, like, we get along well.” JJ finishes.

Maybe not so well, Otabek thinks. Maybe cardboard cut-out JJ got along with her—but then, there’s that other guy, who likes to jerk himself off with other guys and take it when Otabek’s yet again hard for Yura, or for... Otabek blinks. He doesn’t know who he’s hard for, exactly: for Yura who’s so fucking… Yura, or for JJ who’s the type of guy who watches him get hard for other guys on Skype and then says, “D’you want help with that, maybe?”

“What are you thinking about?” JJ takes a swig from his beer. “You know, I’ve never met a guy who thinks as much as you. It’s like, there’s these vast internal monologues, and then once every ten minutes, three words come out.”

“Fuck you.”

“One more—that was two.”

“Fucker.”

JJ laughs.

“I still think you should chase her if you want to. Maybe, tell her everything about hooking up with guys, first, and see what she has to say?”

“I don’t want to tell her about that.”

Otabek raises an eyebrow.

“That’s… mine.” JJ finishes quietly. Thoughtfully.

“Hnn.”

They fall silent again, and they drink. JJ sighs and takes three big gulps. “Fuck, this is fucked up,” he concludes, and stares at the throat of his bottle.

“Hnn.”

“Anyway, if you’re so smart, why haven’t you told Plisetsky about me?”

Otabek blinks.

“I mean, if you tell me to stay off-screen, and shut up and take it, I will, but… dude, learn from my mistakes, like. What’s he going to say when you you’ve been together for three months and he discovers I’ve been your roommate since August 2019.”

Otabek blinks more. “Fuck,” he says.

“My point exactly.”

Otabek rubs his face.

“So,” JJ says and drains his second beer. “Your intervention worked. I will now make an effort to stop moping and move on, and I will head to the Metropolitan. I’m not coming back until past midnight. Maybe I’ll even hook up with someone and spend the night at his, I don’t know. And you, when you talk to _Yura—_ you’re going to tell him, at the very least, that I’m your roommate.”

“My roommate?” Otabek asks, confused.

“Dude, Isabella threw out my stuff. I don’t have a place in Toronto. All my skating gear’s here, and I’ve ordered a chest of drawers so my pile of crap in the corner can stop getting on your nerves.” Now this is… weirdly considerate. In its special, clueless, JJ way. Also, complete news to Otabek, who finds himself hoping that whatever JJ’s bought can fit somewhere—and at least kind of goes together with the rest of the furniture.

“Of course I’m your roommate,” JJ states. _Duh,_ Otabek hears in his intonation.

Otabek’s subconscious produces an imaginary JJ saying, “You’re cool and smart and ambitious; we’ve been together for two years, now, and we get along awesome—of course we’re getting married!”

Otabek takes a swig from his beer.

What the fuck did he just get himself into?

He wonders if it’s good or bad that JJ probably doesn’t know, either.


	5. Chapter 5

“So,” Otabek says and bends low in a side split, exhaling into it and looking up at Yuri who is by now, predictably, perfectly flat on the ground. “JJ’s been staying with me for the past couple of weeks.”

There’s a pause. “You… What? JJ’s been there all this time and you’re just now telling me? Fuck, is he there right now?”

Otabek shakes his head no.

“Wait, so you mean to tell me that for the past two weeks, at any time, JJ could have been, like, listening to us talk and hearing me and shit? Cause I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me—cause if he’d shown his face in front of the camera I’d have come through the screen to claw his eyes out.”

“I’m sorry,” Otabek says and exhales deeper into the split.

“Like, seriously, how could you? I thought we were friends, and you just go behind my back with this annoying asshole who tries to take a jab at me every time he fucking sees me...”

Yuri huffs and lifts up, curving his spine up in that vertebrae-by-vertebrae way from Otabek’s pirated yoga videos. Then he shifts his hips and he’s in a front split, right leg front.

Otabek groans and follows suit.

Yuri lifts his arms and inhales, and does this thing where his belly hollows out and his ribs stick out—then lowers himself, little by little, to lie flat over his front leg. Otabek curses him in his head and tries to stretch his arms as far out forward as they’ll go.

It is not very far.

Yuri has stopped bitching, and fuck—this is not good.

“Hey,” Otabek says. “From now on, I’m making a rule. He’ll be respectful to you at all times, or he’s out on the street.” He counts three breaths before Yuri relents and turns his face towards the screen.

“What’s he doing with you anyways?” he says with a frown.

“Isabella kicked him out. They may not be getting married any longer.”

Yuri lifts up an eyebrow. “Still. You’re not answering the question. Why’s he not at a hotel? With his parents? In Timbuktu? Why you?”

“From what he says, he thought we were friends. So he called me.”

Yuri lifts up and breathes in again. “But why didn’t you tell him to go fuck himself?” Back to middle.

Otabek follows. “I thought we were kind of friends, too.”

“You thought you-” Yuri starts, angry. Turn—left leg sticking out front, now. “I thought _I_ was your friend,” he finishes, quiet.

“You’re my most important friend.” Otabek says with calm certainty.

Yuri breathes in and out and lies forward again, but this time his head is turned away from the screen. Otabek doesn't follow this time—just watches.

“So, who else is your kind-of-friend that I don’t know about.” Yuri says, bitter, still facing the other way.

“Nobody. Everything else about my life, you know.”

“But not JJ.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Otabek says softly. “I was a coward. Am a coward. Still.”

“Apologize again,” Yuri says and turns, his eyebrows set in a firm line.

“I’m sorry.”

“Say I’m your most important friend.”

“You are. The most important.” Otabek declares, and- “Fuck it, I wish I could hug you so much right now,” he tells the screen.

“Fucker,” Yuri says, still pissed, but less.

“The absolute most important. I swear.”

“You should try to lean into your split,” Yuri says.

 _I really really like you_ , Otabek wants to say. _That way._ But it feels like it’s not the time, yet—or maybe, he’s just a coward. Still.

He leans into his split instead.

________________________

JJ’s gone for the second day in a row. On the one hand, JJ’s an adult and his skating gear is here. On the other hand, Otabek is worried.

“Dude, are you alive?” He texts around four PM the next day.

“Fun party last night. Didn’t get up until two,” JJ texts back. “On my way home now. Cook something greasy, will you?”

Otabek rolls his eyes. “I will if you pass by the grocery store and buy ingredients. Enough for two. Also, get a big bunch of broccoli, four big peppers in different colors, a purple onion, a stalk of celery and some sprouts. And a bag of carrots.”

“Anything else?”

“Chicken breast. A pack of six.”

“Okay.”

________________________

JJ comes back with one big plastic bag in each hand and starts regaling Otabek with the story of his adventures while Otabek chops peppers. Apparently, everyone at the Metropolitan thought JJ was fit and loved his ass, and he got pissed drunk and ended up at the house that three of the drag queens who performed share—somewhere, probably, in Queens. There, he got even drunker, made out with people, and had a deep conversation with one of the drag queens—which appeared to have blown his mind.

“Like, dude, she’s so wise—like your mom, kinda, but not. Anyway, I got his number, he said to call him if I want to talk more and grab a coffee or something. Or make out more. Or whatever.”

“How old’s this dude?”

JJ tilts his head. “Didn’t ask. Forty-something, looked like? You should see him do Cher! Wait, I’ll text him to ask when he’s on again so we can go watch.”

“Not my thing, dude.”

“No one says you need to get off on it,” JJ shrugs. “It’s just, the transformation is amazing. And they’re really cool people.”

“And they’ll listen to you talk as long as they get to feel up your ass.” Otabek deadpans.

“Pfft,” JJ says. “You take the piss, but it was really good, just telling someone. She had the best questions, too—like, she’d ask me things and suddenly it’ll be like, whoa, I’d never thought about it this way.”

Otabek chuckles. “I’m glad for you, dude. You made friends. Cool.”

“It’s JJ style!” JJ grins and makes that stupid sign with his hands.

________________________

“So.” Yuri looks down in his lap, contrite. “Mila says I don’t get to dictate who my friends are friends with. And to get over myself and grow up.”

Otabek smiles and shakes his head. “It’s normal.” He rolls out his exercise mat. “I’d be pissed, too, if I found out you were talking to someone I didn’t like without telling me.”

Behind the screen, JJ makes a heart with his hands and affects an “awww” face. Asshole. He's just taking the piss; it's not like he understands Russian.

Yuri nods and starts on some light dynamic stretches to get his blood flowing.

“Also, he’s not so bad,” Otabek says.

Yuri snorts. “Really.”

“If you tell him what to do, he’ll do it. If you tell him he’s responsible for the dishes, he does them.”

“Then can you tell him to leave me the fuck alone next time we’ve got a competition together? Cause when _I_ tell him, it doesn’t do jack shit.” Yuri bends all the way down, torso perfectly flat on his legs, and lies his palms on both sides of his feet.

Otabek can kind of do this, too, though his legs are never as straight. “I think he likes it when you snap at him,” he says. “He thinks it makes you look cool.”

“Hn.” Yuri turns to check on Otabek’s form. “Forget about the hamstrings, turn out your hips.”

Otabek huffs. He always forgets about this part. “Anyway,” he says. “Enough with stupid JJ. What’s Yakov up to?” He asks, and Yura starts ranting.

________________________

JJ is an asshole, so he’s taken his cock out and he’s rubbing it slowly while Otabek is still putting away his mat and saying goodbye to Yuri.

They end up fucking on JJ's mat that night—actual, proper fucking, with JJ’s legs in the air and Otabek’s hand on JJ's dick.

“You, asshole,” Otabek says as he thrusts, “are gonna- be- respectful—fuck. You- will be fucking- polite-”

“I’ll be the fucking- tooth fairy- dude- fucking harder!”

Afterwards, they catch their breath and clean up, and finally drag themselves to bed.

“Seriously, though.” Otabek rumbles in the dark. “Don’t piss him off.”

“I know, I know. Skates—Gowanus Canal.”

“Exactly.”

“What do I _do_ , though? What does he _like_?”

In the dark, there’s silence.

“Dude, you’re doing that thing with the eyebrow at me even though I can’t see you, aren’t you,” JJ says.

Otabek chuckles, because he is.


	6. Chapter 6

Around two months into this thing with JJ, Otabek walks out of the shower with a towel around his waist and his blood runs cold.

Yura’s called early and JJ has picked up the call—and is currently waving his hands at Otabek’s laptop screen. Seeing Otabek, he looks up and grins. 

“Do I need to kill him,” Otabek says in Russian while he pulls his sweatpants on. A random t-shirt is next.

His intonation must have spoken for himself. “I was just saying hi,” JJ says and lifts up his hands in mock-surrender. Otabek shoos him away from in front of the screen.

“Dude, we talked about annoying Yuri.”

“I wasn’t annoying him!”

“He wasn’t,” Yuri says in Russian on the screen. “He… said it’s lame we don’t at least say hi given he’s your roommate. And set up your mat so we can get started and I don’t run late.” Yuri frowns. “And said that he tried my stretching routine alongside you and that it’s brutal and badass.”

“If you’re sure,” Otabek says. “If he’s being an idiot, tell me. I’ve threatened damage to his skating gear.”

Yuri grins and starts to stretch.  

________________

 

Otabek walks on egg-shells the first couple of times, but then he starts to relax. JJ, it turns out, is perfectly capable of not being a dick when he wants to. He shows up in front of the camera to say hi. He asks permission to watch Yuri during one of his sessions so he can see how it’s really done and doesn’t press it when Yuri says no. He asks Yuri about his day. He tells him his cat is awesome. Then, during stretch-time, he doesn’t draw attention to himself to allow Yuri and Otabek to talk. Some days, he even makes himself scarce.

Otabek’s grateful for those days because Yuri is different when JJ’s around—even though they still speak in Russian and JJ can’t understand, he complains less and Otabek finds that he misses it. Weirdly, it’s JJ that brings it up, piping up from behind the screen. “Hey, fairy princess, you’ve grown quiet! Don’t hold yourself back on my account, I too want to hear about what an idiot everyone at your rink is!”

This results in a string of frankly spectacular Russian curses, mostly at JJ’s expense. “Much better!” The idiot in question grins. “I kind of like it when you’re mean and bitchy. I fucking dare anyone to come and cross you; they’re gonna have no balls left by the time you’re done with them.” As far as flattery goes, it's pretty well-calibrated.

Otabek raises an eyebrow, listens to Yuri call JJ a stinky, droopy scrotum and elaborate on the qualities of his mother, then to JJ go, “Ahh, it’s like you’re speaking for my soul when I’m trying to lean into this forward split,” and smiles quietly to himself.

Yuri raises an eyebrow at him. Otabek shakes his head. They share a look. _I like you_ , Otabek wants to say. _I really, really do._ But somehow, now is not the time, either.

________________

 

“So. I think I want to suck your boyfriend’s dick,” JJ says one day.

Otabek’s entire being screams no.

It’s not like he’s made a move yet. There’s always something. First, his excuse was that it’s too new, Yura is too young. Before long, they settle into a routine: stretching together and talking, the occasional snapchat.

Otabek’s grown comfortable. He has all of this—has Yuri—without risking any of The Implications. And there will be Implications, if they ever went there. If they started talking about what it’s about, exactly, that Otabek’s taken to ending their calls with, “You’re my favorite,” more often than not.

He’s not dumb: there’s two ways that this will end. One is, “I like you, but not that way”—and that would make things weird, and it would suck and Otabek would mope on JJ’s shoulder for a change. Now, JJ tells him he’s an idiot; that anyone can see that Yura likes him back. But then, this thing they’ve got together—that’ll never be casual. Not with Yura being who he is and Otabek wanting him the way he does. And that is, almost, the scarier option. Somewhere down that line, Otabek will have to fly to Almaty and say, “So, mom, I’ve got a boyfriend now. And I’m moving in with him, in St. Petersburg or New York or Toronto—and I’m not bringing a nice Muslim girl back. I’m not marrying the Ibdrayevs’ daughter, gram. Dad, there won’t be any grandsons.”

Otabek knows what he’s doing, venting the steam he builds with Yuri by getting dick from JJ. Keeping a weird pause button on the powder keg that is his life.

But in the meantime, Yura asks to hear it more often, that little “you’re my favorite.” Otabek and JJ are sleeping in the same bed, sharing a life—and they’re becoming a thing, too. Waiting is not going to make it go away. Won’t make him fall for a girl, either—won’t transform him into Proper Young Man Otabek.

He closes his eyes and breathes in and out. _Nut up, man_ , his subconscious supplies in JJ’s voice.

“Hey, dude.” JJ puts a hand on his shoulder. “Dude. I don’t have to, yeah?”

This brings Otabek back into the present. JJ doesn’t have such issues, does he; he could be fun and manly and exciting; sass Yuri and get back as well as he gives and better, loving every minute of it.

Otabek finds himself afraid that JJ _will_ be better. That Yuri will like him more.

And he’s back to his silent scream of no.

“I know you guys have a thing, I’d never get in the middle of that,” JJ says as if he knows what Otabek is thinking.

Otabek breathes in again and squares his shoulders. “I’ve got to nut up all the same. If it’s not you, it’ll be someone else.”

“Hmm. I can’t be the only one wondering if I want him to hit me or fuck me. Or both. Preferably while insulting me in Russian.”

Otabek rubs his eyes. “Just… give me some time. Don’t get there first.”

“The thing is,” JJ says with the kind of intonation that tells Otabek he won’t like what’s coming one bit. “I have this idea.”  

Otabek wonders if he really wants to know. “What.”

“Dude, what would you think if, like… it was the three of us together.”

Otabek is struck dumb. “What?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it, doing us both at the same time.”

Otabek hasn’t, because Otabek’s life is enough of a shit show as it is.

“We could get a bigger place,” JJ goes on, entreating. “I could spend a couple of nights a week at Chantayla’s place or just go hook up with someone and go to a hotel, or whatever, to give you guys some time to yourselves. He could ride you while he sucks me. You could be the filling in a JJ-Yura sandwich. Think about it, man.”   

Suddenly, Otabek knows exactly how JJ’s gotten everything he wants in life even though he’s clueless as fuck. It’s the puppy dog eyes.

“Just think about it, yeah?”

________________

 

Over the next couple of weeks, Otabek thinks about it. In fact, he suspects he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it if he tried. The thing is, once he’s accepted that his life’s going to explode on him—once he’s accepted that the cat will be clawing its way out of the bag whether he likes it or not—well. If he won’t be Proper Young Man Otabek—if he can’t fit within the bounds of how his family or society or whoever says he should live… there can be anything on the other side of that line, can't it. When what’s expected of you no longer defines you, either as something you live by or rebel against, you can be whoever you want to be. _They_ can be whoever they want to be—Yura and JJ and Beks.

The night Yura is flying to Moscow for his Nationals and can’t be on Skype, Otabek gets pissed drunk—on proper whiskey, screw Sam Adams—and unloads this entire thing on JJ. 

To his credit, JJ listens carefully and nods, then says that yeah, exactly: he and Chantayla had talked about this, when the Isabella thing was going on. 

 

________________

 

“So, about my idea,” JJ says.

Otabek groans.

“I think I’ll hit on him in China.”

Otabek doesn’t know what his face looks like when he hears that—only that whatever it is, it makes JJ want to reassure him. “I’ll never try to get between the two of you, dude, I told you: I know you’ve got your thing.”

Otabek takes in a deep breath. There’s a week and a half before the Cup of China—and somewhere during that time, he needs to get his shit together. He nods and says, “Hang out with Chantayla this week. I… I’ll tell him. And I want it to be just the two of us.”

“Sure.” JJ nods seriously and pulls out a bag with one hand while he dials Chantayla with the other.

Otabek disappears in the bathroom.

Five minutes later, JJ announces: “So, there was a house meeting. They were all on speaker phone. Apparently, it’s all good and I can stay there as long as I pay for my share of the food and bills. And lounge around the living room in speedos.”

Otabek laughs because somehow, this is now his life.


	7. Chapter 7

That first night, Otabek can’t bring himself to do it. He waits for an opening—for the conversation to somehow _go there—_ but it doesn’t; they talk how they usually talk, save for Otabek telling Yuri about JJ and his friends who require that rent be paid in opportunity to ogle his ass. They laugh at JJ. Then they laugh at Georgi, who has just started as a part-time assistant coach in Moscow while he does a MSU degree in Sports Psychology and tells everyone who'd listen what a Very Demanding Scholarly Degree he's pursuing and how the work is killing him.

They end up having something of a debate on whether a degree is necessary for effective coaching—well, Yuri rants that degrees are for idiots who want to make up for their incompetence with a stack of credentials, and Otabek background freaks out about his own professional future. There’s zero romantic vibe to their conversation. Zilch.

After Yuri runs out for practice, Otabek rolls up his mat, feeling like an idiot. He ends up jerking off joylessly in the shower: he needs to face the entirety of how big a wuss he is now that JJ's not here to distract him.

_________________

Otabek sees JJ and his questioning eyebrow first thing the next morning.

He drops his bag on the locker room bench and says, “I didn’t do anything. I’m a fucking chicken.” Hopefully, if he admits it first, JJ won't start in on him.

It doesn't work. “Dude, how? You’ve been dancing around this so hard you could walk into the Bolshoi and be hired at the spot by this point.”

Otabek shrugs. “Yuri can probably walk into the Bolshoi and be hired at the spot anyway.”

“Dude.” JJ scolds. “Seriously.”

“It just… never came up, Okay? We talked about Georgi and his Sports Psychology degree.”

JJ tilts his head. He sits next to Otabek's bag and starts changing into his skating socks, which are black. And monogrammed. 

“Dude, this is suspicious,” JJ says.

Otabek sits next to him and starts changing, too. “Suspicious how.” He deadpans.

“You guys exchange these Smoldering Looks through the screen—“

Otabek opens his mouth to protest.

“Dude, shut up, you totally do,” JJ says. “The NSA and their KGB buddies have probably started an office bet over when you’ll finally get your heads out of your asses. You guys are really, really obvious here, and you aren’t fooling anyone.”

Otabek pulls on a pair of practice leggings. JJ continues. “And I finally get out of the way so the two of you lovebirds can sort each other out, and you somehow end up talking about Georgi’s career choices? Makes me think you’re not the only chicken here, mate.”

“Hn.”

JJ pulls on leggings of his own. They’ve got the Canadian flag. “Nut up, Altin. Save your fairy princess from the throes of anxiety and tell him you like him already.”

Otabek blinks at this. He hadn’t thought about it that way—that he’s making the first move not just for his own sake, but as an act of sparing Yuri the need to worry. He nods at JJ, resolved.

“C’mon, dude,” JJ motions to the door. “Let’s go kick your butt at quads.”

______________________

While Otabek is busy falling butt-first on the ice all day, his mind works in the background. He can’t just leave this to chance. He needs a plan—and by the time he heads home at around five, he thinks he’s got one.

He skips dinner because he’s nervous, showers and conditions his hair, and by ten thirty, has his outfit for the night lined up: a black muscle tee and lycra leggings. Blue ones. Even if he chickens out, there’ll be no walking away from _that_ topic of conversation.

As he pulls on the leggings over his bare butt, he realizes he’s feeling cautiously excited. He thinks he’ll enjoy this—being seen by Yura. He jumps up and down a couple of times to get his blood moving. By the time eleven o’clock rolls up, he’s set up on his mat in front of his laptop, waiting for Yura to call.

He tries not to be nervous, and fails.

At three past eleven, Yura saves him and rings—and raises an eyebrow as soon as he sees him.

“Figured you’ll make it easy for me to tell you how bad your form sucks?”

“Something like that,” Otabek says and smiles a little.

Yura is looking.

They launch into their familiar sequence of stretches—Yura just starts, and Otabek follows—aaaand yep: definitely looking. Otabek bends forward, making sure that he keeps proper form.

“Are my hips properly turned out?” he teases, turning his head to the side to look at the screen.

Yura swallows and turns red.

“You’re so cute,” Otabek says fondly.

“Shut up,” Yuri says, embarrassed. “I’m not cute. I’m fierce and dignified.”

“Hnnn.”

They breathe together, moving in and out of stretches. Otabek keeps his eyes on the screen and imagines. Hopes.

His dick picks up that he’s hoping.

Otabek breathes in. Moment of truth—front split time.

He’s not hard, but he’s not soft either. There’s no running away from this now.

“Um.” Yuri says as he lowers his torso to the ground, body automatically following the correct form even though his attention is on the screen.

“It’s from looking at you,” Otabek says, his voice low. “It’s an absolute nuisance; happens every single time. It's why I always have to stretch in those baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt.”

Yuri’s mouth falls slightly open. He licks his lips. He looks up. “Beks. You…” He swallows. “Will you?” he says quietly.

“Will _you_?” Otabek says back. “I want to see you, too.”

“You first,” Yuri says and puts his hands under his chin, eyes fixed on the screen.

Otabek looks at Yuri’s flushed cheeks, Yuri’s lips glistening from where he’s wet them. His wide-open eyes. The strand of hair that falls over one cheek. The little pink tongue, darting out again, and the set of teeth that follow, worrying at Yura’s bottom lip.

Otabek is the hero of Kazakhstan. Otabek is brave. He takes a breath and lowers the elastic of his blue lycra leggings, and hooks it under his balls.

“Closer, Beks, move closer,” Yuri whines and pulls his own laptop forward until his nose is almost in the screen.

They’re doing this, then. Fucking finally. They are.

Otabek pulls off his t-shirt and scoots forward, fingers sliding down his chest. He makes a little bit of a show of it—rubs at the six-pack on his stomach, moves up to tease a nipple. Licks his lips. For all the freaking out he did, it was the easiest thing, sitting in front of Yuri with his dick out. He’s been an idiot all this time, thinking that just because they’d kept their pants on, somehow they hadn’t been _this._

He palms himself and rubs. “I want to see you, too,” he says. “C’mon, Yura, please—just give me a peek...”

Yuri reaches one hand forward and touches the screen. “Beks,” he mouths quietly.

“C’mon, fuck, please,” says Otabek and keeps rubbing.

Yuri sits up, but Otabek can’t see—fuck his stupid black cotton tights and crappy Skype cameras. Yuri is taking off his t-shit, now, revealing the most perfect, lean and graceful chest. He’s blushing so hard it’s traveled down his neck. Otabek groans at the sight and—fuck. The fucking t-shirt is in Yura’s lap, and even if he’d had a chance to see the outline of his cock, Otabek has missed it.

“Nooo, Yura, fuck,” Otabek whines.

Yuri leans closer to the laptop. “Harder, Beks, I want to see you...“

Otabek’s had enough of this; he leans forward, too, one hand propping him upright, the other one flying over his cock. “Show me, please, Yura-”

Yuri’s breath hitches. “Sorry, I… I’m running late. I have to go,” he says and slams his laptop closed.

“Fuuuuuck,” groans Otabek and collapses back on his exercise mat, breathing hard, and rubs his face. His dick is miserably hard between his legs, but—something happened. He doesn’t know what, only that he feels like crap.


	8. Chapter 8

Still hard, Otabek reaches for his phone and calls JJ.

“Heyyy, dude, what’s up?” JJ asks, chipper. There’s music in the background. “How did it go?”

“I don’t know,” Otabek says flatly.

“Shit, dude—I’ll be right there, yeah?”

Otabek says nothing.

“I’m getting off the phone to call a cab. Should I call you afterwards?”

“No.”

“Alright then. I’ll see you soon.”

________________________

When JJ unlocks the door around half an hour later, Otabek is curled on his side in the dark, back facing the door. JJ doesn’t turn on the lights—there’s enough to see by coming in through the window—just takes his shoes off and pads quietly to the bed.

Otabek can hear him take his jeans off behind his back. A little bit later, the bed dips.

“Do you want to talk about it?” JJ asks and puts a hand on Otabek’s shoulder.

“No,” Otabek says quietly, still facing the other way.

“I brought a bottle of booze, too, if you want. Raspberry vodka. Was the last full bottle I could grab.”

Otabek sighs and shakes his head no. JJ sounds so earnest, and he came over, and he’s brought him booze. Otabek doesn’t want booze, but it still makes him feel a little better.

JJ wiggles properly under the covers and settles behind Otabek’s back, and spoons him close.

“It’s gonna be alright, dude,” he says in Otabek’s hair. “Whatever it is, you guys are gonna sort it out. I know it.”

“I hope you’re right. He just...” Otabek swallows. “Fuck.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”

Otabek thinks about how JJ says this, but then he hadn’t sorted it out with Isabella.

JJ sighs and pulls him closer. “Shit, dude, what happened?” He says softly.

“I don’t know,” Otabek says.

“Okay. So, you’ll ask him tomorrow. Or whenever he’ll talk to you. And whatever it is, you’ll apologize and you’ll work hard to make it up to him. It’ll be Okay.”

Otabek exhales. Even if JJ is wrong, it feels good to allow himself to believe in his calm certainty, at least for now.

“Trust me, dude. Isabella and I were together for four years. I’ve messed up so many times. You ask what’s wrong, you listen, you say sorry, and you do better next time.”

There’s a sadness in his voice, Otabek thinks. He still misses her.

“It’ll be Okay.”

“Yeah.”

JJ holds him close and burrows his nose in his hair.

They sleep.

_______________________________

 

Otabek’s phone rings at four thirty at night. He sees the number and swipes to accept, groaning low in his throat as he puts it next to his ear.

“Hi,” he says softly, and tries to make it mean, “I like you.”

“Beks.” Yuri says back and sounds much the same.

“You Okay?” Otabek says. “You never call during practice.” Next to Otabek, JJ stirs and perks up, even though he can’t understand a word in Russian.

“Beks. We… this.” Yuri says in a small voice. “What are we doing?”

“Whatever you want us to.” Otabek says calmly.

Yuri waits.

Otabek closes his eyes and takes a breath, feeling JJ's eyes on him.

Nutting-up time.

“I like you." He says. "A lot. _That_ way.  _Have_ liked you, for a while. I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided. I’m in. All the way. So it depends on you, what we do or don't do.”

He can hear Yuri exhale into the phone. “I like you, too,” he mumbles.


	9. Chapter 9

“Dude, I told you so!” JJ grins, face cast in shadows by the light of the street lamps. Otabek feels a little dazed at the sheer weirdness of it all. He’s just spent twenty minutes explaining to Yuri that he’s not just his favorite friend, but his favorite _person_ , all while being relentlessly stared at—and now JJ wants congratulations for having been right. This—fuck JJ.

“Shut up a little, will you,” Otabek says and rubs a hand over his face. “ _Dude_.”

“What’s going on?” JJ says, confused. “I don’t know what you guys were saying, but that was some lovebird cooing alright. You can’t fake being that sappy, in any language.”

“Fuck you, JJ.”

“No, dude, seriously.” JJ is all earnest now, lying on his side with his hand propped on one folded arm.

“Dude, it’s 3 AM.” Otabek sighs. “Fuck. I need some water,” he tells the ceiling.

JJ, God bless his heart, goes and gets it.

Otabek sits up in their bed and drinks.

JJ looks at him in silence.

“It’s just, I told him I’m serious. Long-term. Which means I’d probably have to talk to my parents about it.” Otabek says.

JJ nods and takes away Otabek’s empty glass. “Think about that later. You don’t have to come out to them right away; you can wait and see how you and Yuri work out first.”

Otabek lies back. “I do have to come out to them. Regardless of how Yuri and I work out.”

“Okay.”

For a couple of minutes, Otabek says nothing. “Do your parents know?” he asks.

JJ shrugs. “They do now.”

Right. Isabella and JJ’s things and all that. Of course.

“What did they say?”

“Nothing.”

Otabek thinks about what it would be like for something like this to be a non-issue. Then he wonders whether his father would decide to stop helping with his rink fees if he knew. 

“Come over here. That spooning thing was nice.” JJ says and flops a hand over him in the dark. “Stop worrying.”

Otabek bristles. “Easy for you to say.” He grumbles and gets up and goes to the bathroom.

He needs some fucking space.

 

__________________________

 

Otabek is going to kill JJ. Because while Otabek was busy crashing his sleep-deprived ass into the ice, JJ has gone and talked to Otabek’s coach, and Otabek’s coach now thinks that Otabek needs Support. Which is how Otabek finds himself trapped at the receiving end of a talk about how Otabek shouldn’t worry and that his coach would do her best to work with him if any issues arise, so for the time being he should just focus on his performance.

Otabek loves his coach and appreciates this, but he’s going to kill JJ all the same.

Also, if he wants stable sponsorships, he’s going to have to medal reliably. And talk to Yuri, because fuck.

JJ’s fucked off by the time Otabek’s done talking with his coach, which is smart of him, but also frustrating: after a night of worrying and an entire day of turning his ass purple, Otabek has graduated to pissed—but he has no one to shout at. With a firm line on his mouth, he unlocks his phone and texts: “You had no right to tell her, asshole. This wasn’t yours to share.”

He doesn’t care for a response, at least not yet. He powers off his phone and walks home.

__________________________

 

Yuri, that night, is beautiful—he’s in his tights and small t-shirt as usual but instead of launching into a rant, he bites his lip and blushes pink as soon as the call connects. Otabek smiles at him and launches into their routine. For once, it’s Yuri that follows, sneaking the occasional small glance.  

“I really wish I could kiss you,” Otabek says when they fall into their middle splits. It’s how he learns what Yuri looks like, jerking off in a split—because of course Yuri would, leaning back to prop himself with one hand while pushing down his tights with the other. He undoes his hair, too, and shakes it out so it falls messily around his shoulders. Otabek doesn’t know if he wants to roll his eyes or climb through the screen.

“You, too,” Yuri pants as the dusky-pink head of his dick pops in and out of his closed fist. Otabek shakes his head, mesmerized—not today. Today, nothing can make him stop _looking_.

“Tell me,” Yuri says quietly, so Otabek does: _so beautiful; I like you; you’re my most important person. I wish I was there so much._

Yuri groans and lands a streak of come across the screen—then curses and goes off to get tissues while Otabek’s busy laughing his ass off. If possible, he’s blushing even harder as he wipes down his laptop while trying not to stare at Otabek, who is still hard in his blue lycra tights.

__________________________

JJ rings seconds after Yuri signs off to run to practice. Otabek is exactly that worked up: he picks up his cell phone with one hand and digs in his tights with the other, greeting JJ with a low groan.

JJ laughs into the phone. “Like that, is it?” There’s a shuffling noise over the line. “Give me a second…” a door opens, then closes. More shuffling. “Fucking finally,” JJ says and exhales. “So tell me all about it. Was he very pretty?”

“Asshole, are you seriously going to-”

“Objections?” JJ rumbles and groans, and it hits Otabek so hard his dick fucking _aches_.  

“I bet he let his hair down for you…” JJ continues. “Ran a hand down that smooth pale chest-”

“Better,” Otabek gasps. “Jerked off- in a fucking- split.”

“Fuck,” JJ says, and Otabek can hear him spit into his hand.


	10. Chapter 10

JJ apologizes for outing him the next day at practice. Otabek is still annoyed, but much less so—save for the talk yesterday, his coach hasn’t been weird about it, so on the whole it’s a relief. At least he wouldn’t have to deal with telling her later.

“Dude, I’m so excited for China,” JJ says at lunch.

Otabek glares.

“Aw, you’re an idiot.” JJ bumps his shoulder. “You know no one can take him from you even if they tried, right?”

Otabek chews on his chicken sandwich. “You’re taller. And Canadian. And you don’t come with a tenth of the baggage I do,” he mumbles, uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“Dude—I can be the Tooth Fairy and I still won’t be you.”

“What’s with you and the Tooth Fairy?”

“Just something my dad says,” JJ shrugs.

 

__________________________

 

Otabek’s got his own quads to drill, so he watches the Cup of China on live stream. Beijing is exactly twelve hours ahead, so it’s at three thirty in the morning—and he sets his alarm for even earlier because he wants to call his two idiots and wish them good luck. Everyone expects Yuri to win—the camera pans on him, one leg on the wall, as the commentators talk about his top form and his resounding victories last year. Minami’s not there, but Leo is, and so’s that new Korean kid that’s debuting this year, fresh out of a Junior gold. And then, there’s JJ. Whoever gets the gold, it won’t be a walk in the park.

“Good luck,” Otabek texts, twice.

He gets nothing in response to one of the texts—JJ’s opening the night, so he’s probably ditched his phone and trying to get in the zone already. To his second one, he gets, “so jj asked me to go have coffee,” no punctuation. “Remind him I know where he keeps his skates,” he texts back. “If all else fails, just pour your coffee all over his head and make him get you a new one.”

“Now go wipe the ice with him,” he adds.

He gets a grin emoji in response.

 

Yuri does end up wiping the ice with JJ, which makes Otabek feel good. At the end of the second day, at five AM, he watches Yuri stand up proudly with his gold, and JJ grin and show off his bronze medal, making his silly hand pose for the cameras. The Korean kid is second and still takes himself dreadfully seriously—he stares ahead with fierce determination, and it makes Otabek smile: were they ever that young? He contemplates his last five years in Seniors from his jaded twenty-two-year old vantage point and frowns.

 _Um. So JJ wants to blow me_ , Otabek’s cell phone pings.

Otabek breathes in and out.

 _He says you know_ , Yuri adds.

 _You can do whatever you want to with whoever you want to_ , he types with his brows firm and his shoulders firmer. _Nothing changes on my end_.

Otabek is the hero of Kazakhstan. Otabek is brave.

The message registers as read, but Yuri says nothing.

Otabek thinks and adds: _I watched you_

_You were amazing as always_

_Wiped the ice with him just like I thought you would_

_Congratulations on the gold_

_You deserve it_

He pauses a little. _Whichever way you choose to celebrate, enjoy yourself_

_Talk to you soon_

_My favorite person_

The messages, again, show up as read.

Dots start and stop and start and stop.

 _Thanks_ , Yuri types eventually.

The dots wiggle some more.

_Will you still toss his skates in the canal if he’s an asshole_

_Yes_ , Otabek types with zero hesitation.

Yuri sends back a little heart.

 _It’s five in the morning here_ , Otabek types. _I’ll go crash for a couple of hours before practice_. Then he breathes and switches off his phone. He lied: he won’t be sleeping.

He goes and makes a cup of coffee.

 

__________________________

 

When his coach susses out that he’s stayed up all night, she bans him from the ice. He grumbles, but ultimately supposes he deserves it. He’d have done the same in her place. So instead, they re-watch everyone’s programs from last night, pausing and rewinding and sketching. She quizzes him on their flaws and their strong points. She asks him what he would have done if he were their coach.

Sometime mid-morning, after she’s lifted one-too-many eyebrows at his fidgeting, he hands her his cell phone and tells her to keep it until dinner.

She raises an eyebrow yet again, but takes it and drops it in her purse.

 

*~*~*

 

He gets his phone back at five-thirty, and spends the next forty minutes pretending not to stare at it.

At six thirteen PM—six in the morning Beijing time—JJ sends him a selfie. It’s a generic hotel room bed, and JJ is sitting naked, the white duvet pooled around his hips. He’s got messy hair and the most obnoxious, widest shit-eating grin that side of the Pacific. Behind him, sleeping with his mouth slightly open and his hair strewn all over the pillow, is Yuri.

Otabek’s insides do something; it's like his heart swells and he wants to punch something all at once. Like the manly guy he is, he bravely tries to push it away—but he still can’t stop staring at the picture.

JJ launches into a text-tirade.

_Dude he’s so cute_

_In a snarling rabid kitten kinda way_

_Pulls hair_

_Tells me to get on my knees and rants at me in Russian_

_Tells me to shut up ‘cause I love it and to suck harder or he’ll tell you to ruin my skates_

_Blushes so sweet—all the way down his chest, man_

_Sucked him off once_

_I can grab his tiny ass in my palms_

_His dicks so nice fits exactly right in your mouth_

_Velvety like_

_He moans and kicks the sheets as he comes_

_Then sucked him off with my fingers up his ass_

_Told him to imagine your dick there_

_Princess came so hard he almost got the TV_

_Dude this is gonna be so great_

Otabek looks at his phone and he wants to kill JJ. Also, he wants them both home. He pictures Yuri—tiny, pale, blushing Yuri—in his bed, legs in the air, asshole stretched around JJ’s dick—

JJ’s ass, flexing as he fucks; JJ’s fingers in Yuri’s hair, that tattoo—Yuri reaching out for JJ and pulling his hair, JJ baring his neck and arching back…

Otabek wants. Wants to pull JJ off, to get in there, but what if JJ manages to come before that

What if Yuri’s ass is full of JJ’s come and Otabek sinks into it as it is, raw and fucked open—

What if JJ’s come squelches out as he pounds

Leaks out around his cock

What if Yuri tilts his hips and pulls him down and says, “Come inside me, Beks, fuck I want your load...”

Another picture comes on Otabek's cell phone, this time only of Yuri’s face, awake and peering sleepily.

 _Fuck_ , Otabek types back.

 _I know_ , JJ says and follows it with a grinning emoji. _Give us a dick pic man_

Otabek’s been thinking with his other head for a while now, so he pulls it out and does, not even bothering to make it artistic. He sprawls on the couch and sends another one, and then, for good measure, films his hang moving up and down his shaft, spreading spit as it goes, and sends it.

Then he films himself come, and sends that, too.

_Dude your princess is sitting right here with his hands around my waist and his nose glued to the phone watching this_

_And he’s blushing so hard_

The next picture he gets has Yuri and JJ’s dicks together in JJ’s meaty hand. It’s taken from above and kind of to the side, so you can see down Yuri’s chest and a little bit of blond hair in the corner.

 _Dude this is the best_ , JJ texts.

 _Yeah,_ Otabek texts back and saves it.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Otabek doesn’t pick up JJ from the airport. First, it’s expensive. Second, JJ is an adult and can get his own ass back here. And third (though Otabek wouldn’t actually admit this), he’s still salty over JJ getting there first.

He sits up and waits for JJ all the same. A part of him is salty, sure, but the part that isn't wants to talk about fingering Yuri and then it kind of wants to fuck.

It’s a little past eleven when JJ’s keys rattle in the door. JJ stumbles in with his large black roll-on—and Otabek's got no time to process: a gangly blond projectile launches itself at him and clings, chanting, “Beks, Beks, Beks, Beks,” into the crook of his neck.

Otabek  buries his nose in Yuri’s hair. He hadn’t expected this, but finally—fucking _finally_.  It’s been so long since they’ve seen each other in person.

Yuri sighs happily and relaxes into Otabek’s arms.

Otabek just holds and feels like he can hold forever. “I’m so happy,” he murmurs into Yuri’s ear.

“Beks,” Yuri says simply, and the part of Otabek that’s been jealous and afraid of loss unclenches. This right here—there’s nothing more he needs. He’s has wanted and missed for so long he’s forgotten what not missing feels like—and it feels like this. Like Otabek’s come home.

In his peripheral vision, JJ drags in a smaller, leopard print suitcase and a blue over-the-shoulder bag that says, RUSSIA.

“I’m ordering pizza, is that fine?” JJ looks at them, amused. His eyes and Otabek’s connect over the crown of Yuri’s hair.

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t give a flying fuck,” Otabek says, slightly dazed.

“Order fried chicken,” Yuri’s voice is muffled into Otabek’s shirt. “And ice cream. Fuck Lilia and her diet, she isn’t here to watch me.”

“Flavor?”

“The one with sugar in it.”

JJ chuckles at this and fiddles with his phone, disappearing into the bathroom as he goes to order. Otabek background-wonders whether Pizza people suspect how many calls to them are made while some loser holds his dick with his other hand as pisses.

With another sigh, Yuri disentangles himself and pulls back a little. “Beks,” he says again, and _this is it_ —they’re looking in each other’s eyes now, faces close together. Otabek’s heart beats, because this is happening. For real. There’s a throaty moan—Otabek thinks it comes from him—and Yuri’s chapped lips are touching his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's tiny but it felt complete, so--enjoy.


	12. Chapter 12

“You’re here. You’re here, you’re here, you’re here,” Otabek rasps out between kisses. He palms Yuri’s neck, traces a thumb along his jawline. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it, but it’s become somehow squarer. They talk on Skype every day, but it’s not until Otabek’s actually holding him that he realizes how Yuri is a little taller now. His hair’s longer, too. “How are you here?”

“I shipped my gear home and I changed my ticket.”

“For how long?”

“A week.”

Otabek grins. He’s got no idea how Yakov allowed this, but—a week!

“Whoa,” JJ pipes in from the middle of the room. “Check this out! Miss Altin smiles! I didn’t think that _happened_.”

“Fuck you, JJ.” Otabek says without breaking eye-contact with Yuri.

“JJ persuaded me to come.” Yuri says to Otabek in Russian, paying JJ zero heed. “He said that if our _thing’_ s the most important, it might be good for the two of us to actually do things. In person.”

Otabek is getting JJ free pizza for like, a month, because it dawns on him what JJ’s just pulled off. JJ’s blown Yuri with the explicit knowledge that Yuri and Otabek _Have A Thing_. Now that Yuri has hooked up with JJ, he’s somehow not pissed about JJ and Otabek hooking up—if JJ told Yuri about JJ-and-Otabek. What did JJ tell Yuri? They so should have talked.

One thing, though, is certain.

“I’m all for doing things in person,” Otabek says. “In fact, if it were up to me, we won’t stop doing things in person for the entire week.”

Yuri beams at him.

“I wish I could tell the world about Otabek-the-Stoic and Plisetsky-the-Fierce cooing sweet nothings at each other,” JJ says in English, sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room and grinning. “Just look at you guys! I did _good_!”

Otabek ignores him and slips his palms under the hem of Yuri’s shirt. “Did you enjoy your blowjobs?” He says in Russian. “Tell me everything.”

“Hmm. JJ says that my cock is like silk.” Yuri arches a little in Otabek’s hands. “And that it fits exactly right in his mouth... And he did this thing where he squeezed my butt while I was balls deep in his mouth, coming down his throat...”

Otabek groans.

“He’s good,” Yuri says. “And he says that you’re good, too. Ah, fuck, I’m so hard; these jeans are fucking murder,” Yuri squirms and looks right into his eyes, pupils blown. “Are _you_ good, Beks? Will you unbutton me and take it out? Suck my cock better than him?”

 _I’m buying JJ all of the pizza,_ Otabek thinks and kisses Yuri while undoing his ridiculously tight jeans. There’s grooves into Yuri’s dick, from where it’s been pressed against the seams. Otabek’s fingers close around it— _silky’s fucking right—_ and Yuri’s hips buck as he moans into the kiss.

“Fuck, that’s hot.” JJ mutters and licks his lips. “Princess, lose the t-shirt already,” he says. _Yes, good_ , Otabek thinks—and there’s so much skin, pale and smooth, and _wow, the nipples,_ _so pink_ -

There’s a groan from the middle of the floor. Otabek looks over. JJ’s nose is in Yuri’s discarded t-shirt, and his hand is down his pants.

  


  


Yuri lies, spent and panting, with an arm flung over his eyes.

JJ comes over, still hard, and sits on the bed. Yuri stirs and looks up, and it’s the most dumb-struck and amazed expression ever. Otabek’s ego swells a little. He did _good._

Yuri blinks and looks at JJ, then back at Otabek, then back at JJ.

“I told you so!” JJ grins as their eyes meet. “Tell me it isn’t a great idea. Double the dick, double the blowjobs!”

 _All of the pizza_ , Otabek thinks. _For three months, not one._

“Just look at this and tell me you don’t like it,” JJ says and pulls Otabek by his neck to kiss him. When Yuri says nothing, Otabek lets it happen: pulls JJ forward, too; slides one hand down to the front of his jeans to palm at his hard-on.

JJ pulls apart from the kiss, his hand still at the back of Otabek’s neck, and looks into his eyes. “Fuck, you taste like his dick,” he rasps.

Otabek stares at JJ’s lips in a daze, his brain trying to process how Yuri— _Yuri—_ is _here,_ in Otabek’s dingy studio in Brooklyn, watching as JJ kisses him and slides a hand down his sweats. His worlds collide, and it is too much, too fast; Otabek needs firm ground, needs to make sure Yuri is Okay with whatever the fuck this is that’s happening— and Otabek’s suddenly being yanked to the side.

He gasps for air as gangly limbs wrap around him. Yuri.

“Mine,” Yuri growls and glares daggers at JJ. “You get to have him all the time. Plus you promised you’ll fuck off.”

JJ growls in frustration, dick still hard, and throws himself back on the bed. “Fuck… Yeah, Okay, fair enough,” he says as he rubs his face. “Shit. Give me a second.”

JJ sighs. Then he reaches for his back pocket, pulls out his cell phone, and dials. The call connects almost immediately.

“Hey, babe,” JJ says. A gushing voice floats through, but it’s too indistinct to make out. “Oh, you watched me? Thanks!... Listen, can I come stay over? The Russian team’s kicking me out… Yeah, alright. Thanks, babe... Yeah, I’ll take a cab… Yeah. See you soon!”

He disconnects the call and flops his arm down on the mattress. “Fuck,” he says once again. Then, “What?” when he sees how Otabek glares at him.

“I’m. Not. Russian.” Otabek growls. Yuri giggles.

“Nah, I know, it’s just that you guys speak—Okay, no, no Russian team, apologies, sorry,” JJ backtracks when Otabek keeps glaring.

“Don’t call people from the former USSR Russian,” Yuri says, amused. “Trust me, you don’t even want to _touch_ that history.”

“Yeah, Okay,” JJ says like a person with a hard-on who’s being forced to actually think.

JJ’s phone rings again. The food’s here. Whining at his luck, JJ ties a sweatshirt around his hips to hide his hard-on and goes to get it.

Behind his back, Yuri grins.


	13. Epilogue

 

This year, Yuri and JJ have been assigned to the Trophee Eric Bompard.

After the free skate, JJ’s fourth, but he grins as always while Yuri sulks about the Korean boy who’s beaten him to the gold for half a point. They’re in JJ’s hotel room, lazing around and too exhausted to move. Somehow, Yuri’s managed to sprawl himself half on top of JJ, hair loose and nose in his cell phone. In spite of the champagne at the banquet and the satisfaction of having utterly trounced JJ (Yuri’s words), he’s stubbornly sticking to being in a complete strop. JJ doesn’t envy the hapless journo who decides to ask Yuri how it feels to lose so narrowly to someone four years his junior at the press-conference tomorrow.

That idiot’s going to have his eyeballs clawed out and JJ’s gonna watch, preferably with some popcorn. Then he’s going to buy front-row tickets for the GPF, because if he knows Yuri at all, that Korean kid will be getting his ass handed to him and Nagano will be carnage.

Also, Nagano’s in Japan. Katsuki’s family runs an onsen in Japan, and Yuri is some kind of friends—JJ won’t be the one asking what kind—with Katsuki’s husband. The point is, a hot-spring vacation won’t be a bad way to relax after a big event. Not at all.

JJ picks up the bottle of champagne they’ve dragged up from the banquet and swigs.

“Princes, let me suck you,” he says. That hot spring tangent has given him _thoughts_.

“No,” Yuri says to his cell phone.

JJ pulls on Yuri’s hip. “Aww, c’mon, just a little!” It’s a tried and true tactic: when you don’t get your way, irritate people until you do. It works especially well with Yuri who never holds back too hard when JJ wants to end up on the receiving end of a tirade in Russian with a hand pulling on his hair. “Princeeee~s,” he perseveres.

He gets a bony elbow in his ribs for his trouble. JJ shrugs. It’s a response. “Backrub?”

“No.”

“Footrub?”

“No.”

He swigs from the bottle and tries to make an earnest face. “Even if I lick between your toes?”

“Fuck off, JJ.” Yuri says, annoyed. “Give me that.”

JJ hands over the champagne with a theatrical sigh and gets up to use the bathroom. Behind him, Yuri picks up the bottle and takes a big gulp.

On his way back, JJ digs in his suitcase. Yuri pretends not to watch him from the corner of his eyes.

“Princess—Get up!” JJ says with one of his hands behind his back.

Yuri looks up from his cell phone and frowns.

“C’mon, you need to be standing for this to work right.” JJ says from the middle of the room.

Yuri watches from the bed. “I will if you burn your boxers.” He drawls and drinks. Said boxers are white, saggy, and drug-store-brand—and JJ insists they’re the most comfortable thing on planet Earth: so he’s bought eight pairs. Yuri looks at each and every one of them as if he can set it on fire with his eyes alone. Otabek claims that’s the only reason JJ keeps wearing them. He’s not wrong.

On the whole, it’s an excellent way to needle Yuri, who wears Andrew Christian designer briefs that say TROPHY BOY around the elastic and enthusiastically fulfills his sponsorship obligations by posting Instagram pics of his mid-riff (seen from behind, the band peeking out from a pair of jeans that barely hold up on his pert, bubbly ass). JJ loves these pics. He’s saved all three of them to his phone and has graciously volunteered to take further ones, should the need arise.

He looks down at his own discolored pair and mentally bids them goodbye. “Done!” he says, chipper.

Yuri raises an eyebrow, surprised. “What, really?”

“Really. Here, I swear on the Canadian flag,” JJ says and touches his tattoo.

Yuri rolls his eyes but gets up. By now, he’s gotta be at least a little curious about what’s going on.

“Alright, stand here,” JJ says as he maneuvers him to the center of the room. “Great.”

Then he drops down on one knee and produces a box.

“Princess, will you do me the honor of marrying me?” He looks up, earnest.

“...the fuck,” Yuri says and blinks.

JJ keeps holding the box.

 

 

Yuri looks down at JJ, who’s being an absolute idiot, and his forehead wrinkles. He tilts his head to the side. “Why _me_?” He asks, confused. Because there’s Yuri-and-Otabek, there’s JJ-and-Otabek, then there’s that thing where all of them sleep together, and that _other_ thing, where Yuri and JJ fuck when they’re somewhere and Otabek can’t join them, like right now. There’s also JJ’s drag queen friends. Yuri has no clue what’s going on there, except that they’re chill and they’re the kind of people who can hook you up with good pot. JJ calls his main friend “babe” and disappears there for a week at a time—which is nice, because Yuri and Otabek have time to be mushy and attached at the hip without JJ taking the piss.

All of this is to say, if JJ’s going to propose to anyone, the last person Yuri would expect it to be is himself.

He lifts an eyebrow at JJ. “No, seriously. Why?”

“Because that Kazakh of yours has no common sense.” JJ pouts.

“Huh? You asked him first?”

“Of course I asked him first. He said no—freaked out on me, in fact. Something something Kazakhstan, something traditional family...”

Yuri knows about that. Otabek’s cuddled him more than once, telling him how much he wishes he could introduce him to his parents and be open about the two of them—but please not yet. It’s the “not yet” that does it—makes Yuri want to strangle Otabek then go shoot up a school. So Yuri would rant, Beks would profess his love, and in the end Yuri would relent—because Beks does mean it. It’s just that there would always be excuses. Now, it’s, “Wait until I retire.” So why not, “Wait until I’ve got a coaching gig lined up?” and “Wait until I’ve got an established career and I’m a respected name in the business?”

When Yuri says this, Otabek would look at him with his entire heart in his eyes and say, “Please.” The Hero of Kazakhstan remains a coward.

JJ knows about all this. He’s been there for some of these rows.

Which brings Yuri back to his previous point: what the fuck?

“Look,” JJ says. “I’ve got a Canadian passport.”

“Aha?”

“You marry me—doesn’t have to be a big deal, we sign at the Montreal town hall, we have a party in my parents’ back garden, that’s all,” JJ mitigates preemptively. “Then five years later, you’re a citizen.”

“Aa-ha.”

“By that time, Miss Altin’s stopped clutching her pearls; you divorce me, and you propose to him. And he gets to be a citizen, too.”

“What makes you think he’ll agree,” Yuri asks in a small voice.

“Of course he’ll fucking agree. It’s worked every. Single. Time.” JJ says. “I swear. He’ll play prim and proper and stall, spinning all of this bullshit in his head, and then as soon as I say, ‘If you’re not making that move, I am,' he’s on Skype in his lycra leggings, professing his feelings.”

Yuri’s eyebrows are somewhere in his hairline. Also, it feels good that JJ thinks that Otabek’s an idiot. Because Yuri loves Otabek. Yuri has empathy for Otabek’s shit. But also? Otabek drives Yuri up the fucking wall.

“C’mon, say yes,” JJ entreats. “It’s a good plan. Canada’s a good country. Canadians are cool; we say sorry a lot and we’ve got universal health care. And hockey. And seals and polar bears. Maple syrup? You love maple syrup on ice cream.”

 _This dork_ , Yuri thinks and reaches for the box. In it are three simple bands: same design, different size. Yuri knows that one of them will fit him.

“Yours has a little diamond,” JJ says proudly. “’Cause you’re our fairy princess an’ shit.”

You’re our fairy princess. _Our_.

Yuri bites his lip.

He examines the rings. They’re simple and classy, and plain white—he can’t tell what they’re made of. He can’t see a diamond. But he turns the band he thinks is his, and there it is—a single tiny gem, sunk into the metal.

It occurs to him: JJ’s made these to order.

“You put in effort,” Yuri says thoughtfully.

“Of course I did!”

Yuri thinks. “And you’re, like, serious? About doing this long-term?”

“Well, we work, the three of us, don’t we? We get along. I want to be able to know I can live in the same country as you without freaking out about immigration issues or about whether they’ll let me visit you guys in the hospital.”

Yuri takes in a deep breath. Exhales. It’s—sweet—and... stuff.

He takes another breath.

“Yeah. Yeah, Okay,” he says, his voice shaky.

JJ grins and shoots up, half-tackling him. Somehow, between kisses, the band finds its way on Yuri’s finger. JJ’s even put it on the proper hand—the right one.

It fits perfectly, and the little diamond _is_ cute.

Yuri stretches out his fingers and studies the band. 

“My grandpa’s gonna have a heart attack.” He grins.

 

 


End file.
